Thirst for Australian bloodstock underlined by A$400,000 Super One colt

A domestic buying bench featuring some new and arguably unexpected names prepared to invest heavily at the top-end of the market have helped underpin Tuesday’s record-breaking Inglis Ready2Race Sale in Sydney, another example of the thirst for Australian bloodstock.

The honour of the top-priced lot went to a more traditional two-year-old sale jurisdiction after a prominent Hong Kong owner went to the benchmark figure of A$400,000 (approx £217,000/€258,000) for a colt by Super One and in turn stealing the limelight from juveniles by Coolmore’s Pierro and Newgate Farm’s sire sensation Capitalist, three of 17 lots to make $200,000 or more.

Despite Super One not deemed as commercially popular as the aforementioned pair, the colt’s breeze-up in Queensland was not missed by a large number of experienced buyers, leading to the intense competition for the Symphony Lodge-consigned horse.

He ran the fastest time of the morning at Eagle Farm on the dirt track, recording a sizzling 10.03 seconds for his 200-metre hit-out.

Cheng Keung Fai, the owner of Hong Kong’s champion four-time Group 1 winner Designs On Rome, won the spirited duel which was clear from the outset when an opening A$200,000 bid received from the Riverside Stables floor set the platform for the sales-topping colt.

Symphony Lodge is run by Matt and Alison Park from Oakey in Queensland and they were left to play a hands-off approach during the sale, instead watching the action unfold online due to the closure of the state border.

To top the sale was due recognition for the Super One colt, according to Alison Park, who admitted the achievement had exceeded her high expectations.

“It was amazing but at the end of the day he breezed up quickly, he’s a quick horse, big and scopey, he wasn’t pushed, he did it all so naturally so he deserved to sell well,” she said.

“Super One is great for the overseas market, but he probably hasn’t had the runners here yet to get that same recognition, so we never really knew how the horse would sell so to top the sale, wow, it really is amazing.

“I thought we’d get A$200,000 to A$250,000, especially after the x-ray hits, which were big. He was busy during parades but A$400,000? No way.”

Bought by Golden River Investments for A$55,000 from the Edinglassie Thoroughbreds draft at this year’s Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling sale, the colt is by the same sire as Hong Kong cult horse Gluck Racer, a winner of three races for owner Lau Kwai Ching and trainer Manfred Man and, more recently, Jimmy Ting.

Catalogued as Lot 137, he is the fifth living foal out of the unraced Cash First, herself a sister to High Achiever, the dam of Group 3 winner She’s So High. Another half-sister, Madoni, is the dam of stakes-winning juvenile Mockery.

Super One, who started his stud career at Newgate Farm, is standing this season at Newhaven Park.

More than A$11 million traded at Ready2Race

Unlike much of the past almost two years, Inglis was forced to adapt to the ever-changing pandemic conditions, thus management chose to push back the Ready2Race Sale by a fortnight in order to fall after the New South Wales government had relaxed restrictions.

The market, which hit a lull after Lot 1’s barnstorming entrance at A$320,000, picked up significantly in the afternoon to lead to a record aggregate of A$11,696,500 (it closed at A$11,642,000 last year after the sale of passed in lots were completed) and an average of A$115,165 after 102 horses changed hands as of Tuesday night.

The names Turner and Trilogy Racing featuring high up as the buyers of the top lot list may have come as a surprise to many observers, but it was not quite so, according to Inglis general manager of bloodstock sales and marketing Sebastian Hutch.

“We worked really hard to canvas a broad cross-section of people for the sale, be they domestic or international,” Hutch said on Tuesday night.

“This is a concept that we are heavily invested in. We want to see it do well; we believe it can do well and it is a format that has the capacity to grow further, as it has in the States and Europe.

“We’ve been promoting this sale for three months and I think we came this week fairly confident that we were going to have engagement from a broad cross-section of people.”

The clearance rate, which in the morning was around 45 to 50 per cent, had increased to 81 per cent by the evening and Hutch says the figure can rise again in the coming days.

He said: “For a sale like this, there is obviously a challenge of vendors trying to meet the market. They put a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of effort to get these horses to this point, so inevitably there’s an inclination on the part of a number of vendors to try to set a value on these horses and protect them to that point, so the sale took a little while to find its mark.

“We look like we’re going to land on a clearance rate of somewhere above 80 per cent, which is really fantastic for a sale of this kind.

“The fact that there was so much competition on the better lots right from the get-go gave real confidence to the market and, certainly, in the second half of the day there felt like there was real urgency to the buying.”

Magic Millions will hold its version, the 2YOs In Training Sale, on November 8, before New Zealand Bloodstock conducts its two-day virtual auction on November 17-18.

The move away from the Karaka complex in Auckland was confirmed on Tuesday, with the sale moving to a virtual format at Te Rapa.

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